


Hound and Wolf and Tiger

by threesmallcrows



Category: Running Man RPF
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Friendship, Gen, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 02:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5229689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threesmallcrows/pseuds/threesmallcrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It is hard to be young and alone and unknown in Seoul; immeasurably harder than it is to be old, like Jong-kook is, too well-known, like he is; fenced-in by the shadow of his own idol days and the men and women that knew him then."</p><p>How Kim Jong-kook meets Lee Kwang-soo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hound and Wolf and Tiger

**Author's Note:**

> The characters of Kwang-soo and Jong-kook in this story are borrowed and invented from their Running Man personas; this story is not meant to be read as if it is about real people, nor was it written with that intention.

The man in the hallway nearly hits Jong-kook in the stomach.

 

Jong-kook is a fast walker by habit. He almost trips, trying to stop himself.

 

He looks at the hand. It is disembodied in the dark. Long fingers holding a long cigarette.

 

“…smoke?”

 

He nearly misses it. The line is badly delivered, hoarse and too low. The man clears his throat, abashed. But the hand remains steady, a bar across Jong-kook’s exit.

 

“Sorry?”

 

He looks for a face. He eventually locates one, a good ten centimeters higher than expected. It’s not any that he knows. Like the hand, it is very—long. Long nose, long jaw, long lips. A face carved out of wood, tranquil and not given to movement.

 

“Ah. Jong-kook- _ssi_ ,” says the wooden face. “You’re from Turbo.”

 

“Yes… do I know you?”

 

“No.” After a long pause, he adds belatedly, “I’m Lee Kwang-soo.”

 

Jong-kook wants this man to move his spidery hand out of his way. He could brush him aside—he doesn’t look like he’d endure much resistance. But he hesitates. He feels—caught. Like there is some kind of unfinished business between them now.

 

Jong-kook searches for something to say. Luckily the other man seems just as content to stand there in silence. He breathes faintly. He looks at nothing in particular.

 

Suddenly, Jong-kook realizes the man is waiting for a response to his question.

 

“…I don’t smoke. Thanks,” he tries.

 

The man sighs. It is so slight that Jong-kook doesn’t so much hear it as feel it, like a ripple in the air pressure. Then, finally, the arm moves—to stub the cigarette out against the wall. Its light sputters out beneath the man’s huge palm, helpless as a firefly caught beneath a jar.

 

It bothers Jong-kook. Wastefulness always has, no matter how slight. He can’t help pointing out, “There was a lot of that left.”

 

“I know,” the man says. “I don’t smoke either. I just always—wanted to try that.”

 

Jong-kook squints, blinking rapidly. He is trying to decide if this man is playing some sort of game with him. He’s met plenty of coy, clever people in the entertainment industry, fox-like people with fox-like eyes who make a habit of slouching in dimly-lit corners and saying things like, _I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to offer a cigarette to a man like you_. Words that bloom and fade in the night as quickly as a spray of perfume; talk of no substance. People like that have always made Jong-kook feel confused and a little irritated, and now that he’s no longer a green-footed debut begging everyone’s favor he takes the luxury of avoiding them as much as possible.

 

Jong-kook decides that this man is not fox-like. Nobody aiming for clever would just— _stand_ there like that. Hands still and limp against the wall, with that dopy look on his face, like a dog’s right after its master has left the house.

 

“Kwang-soo.”

 

He and Jong-kook flinch simultaneously. Jong-kook at the unexpected intimacy of the name, flung out into space like a dagger. Kwang-soo, he doesn’t know what at.

 

The woman who comes up the hall is less a fox, more a wolf. She is beautiful in the way that knives can be beautiful, that guns can be beautiful. Her breed are the reason why warships are named after women. She is maybe a heiress, Jong-kook thinks. Certainly somebody of power.

 

“I’ve been looking for you for the last fifteen minutes.”

 

“ _Noona_ ,” the man says. He looks shabby in her light. Sounds helpless, like a child waiting for a scolding.

 

“We’ll be late. Say goodbye to your friend, and we’ll go.”

 

“Goodbye,” he mutters to Jong-kook, bowing deeply. And then he is gone after her, loping in her tiny lily-footsteps like a basset hound.

 

He has left behind the unsmoked cigarette. Jong-kook watches it burn. The smoke curls itself into punctuation in the air; a question mark, a comma, a double-quote. A door bangs shut somewhere far down the hall.

 

 _Always wanted to try—_ what, exactly?

 

After a moment, he grinds the thing out—just to be safe.

 

()

 

The image of the ill-matched couple sparks in Jong-kook’s mind a few times over the next week or so. But he soon forgets about them. His managers are pushing him to pump out another album to celebrate his return. His hours brim full with talk show appearances, photoshoots, interviews, fundraisers and charity parties and openings. He reads each day’s schedule like a newspaper while he eats breakfast; talks himself hoarse in the day, sings at night, and works out at a nearby gym between recording sessions—the one part of his schedule that he refuses to cede over to promotions.

 

It is hectic and regimented in ways both similar to and entirely different from the service. It doesn’t feel bad to Jong-kook, but it doesn’t entirely feel like home, either. Mostly, it feels foreign. Odd.

 

This is what you do when you’re a celebrity over thirty, and when you’ve just returned from your military service. You try to keep the world from forgetting you. 

 

His agent scolds him for the third time on his choice of outfit—“Jong-kook- _ssi_ , you can’t go on the show dressed like that! What were you thinking? I’ll send you my stylist next time.” And he doesn’t explain to her that he hasn’t had to choose his outfit in two years. That he’s a bit rusty at being a celebrity.

 

Mostly, Jong-kook lets his overpacked days push him along like a twig in a current. Doesn’t think too much, too deeply. Waits for himself to sink back into the realization of Seoul. Back into his old cicada shell, his own discarded, patiently-waiting skin.

 

On Tuesday, in an attempt to mollify his harried agent, he arrives at the W Korea magazine set extra-early. The photoshoot is of duos—one celebrity, one model apiece. He wanders over to Song Ji-hyo, the only one he knows there. She greets him quietly and asks him about the service.

 

They’re talking when a tall, thin silhouette lopes by.

 

“Hi, _noona_.”

 

“Kwang-soo- _yah,_ ” she says.

 

After he passes, Jong-kook looks at Ji-hyo.

 

“He’s _younger_ than you?”

 

She frowns. “Don’t make fun of Kwang-soo.”

 

“I’m not,” he protests. “I don’t—know him. I mean, I’ve kind of met him once, but that’s it.”

 

“I think he’s only twenty-three or twenty-four.”

 

“Twenty-three? You’re kidding.”

 

“No, really.”

 

“He’s got the wrinkliest twenty-three-year-old face I’ve ever seen.”

 

“ _Oppa!_ ”

 

He gestures, hands up— _Sorry, sorry._ But it’s true.

 

“What is he?” he asks.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Is he a singer, or an actor? Has he debuted? I haven’t heard of him.”

 

“He’s not an entertainer. He’s one of the models.”

 

“He’s a _model_?”

 

“Kim Jong-Kook- _ssi_!”She hits him lightly in the arm. He lets her—he’s always had a bit of a soft spot for Miss Song. “What’s Kwang-soo ever done to piss you off?”

 

“I don’t know him,” he protests again.

 

“Well, I don’t know anything about modeling, but he’s a good guy. The earnest and honest type.”

 

“Kind of like Kang Gary, you mean.”

 

She frowns ferociously at him.

 

“Just saying. Isn’t it true?”

 

Then she’s up with Kwang-Soo and if she is shy and a little uncomfortable under the cameras, he is someone else entirely. He plays the wolf to Ji-Hyo’s Riding Hood, bristling in a pencil-thin black suit with his hair wild and his eyes dark. He moves so naturally under the director’s instructions that Jong-kook nearly forgets that there’s a director at all.

 

He is a model, he thinks. In manner if not in face.

 

At dinner afterwards, he finds himself seated next to him. They talk about the service, which Kwang-soo has apparently already completed, despite his youth.

 

“What did you miss?” asks Jong-kook. He is genuinely curious. So few people he knows—few celebrities—opt in under the age of 30.

 

Kwang-soo goes quiet for a long while. It is not the first time he has done so in their conversation, which has lurched forwards like a man on a crutch, every stream of words from Jong-kook washing up against a wall of silence from Kwang-soo. They must sound as mismatched as they look; across the table, Ji-hyo keeps hiding laughs and glances at them beneath her hand. But Jong-kook doesn’t mind it. Most young people talk too much; it’s refreshing to find one that can’t get the words out.

 

“I didn’t really miss anything,” he finally says.

 

“Nothing at all?”

 

“Everybody thought it was weird. The other guys missed their girlfriends, or cars, or being able to go out for food—things like that.”

 

“Are you happy to be back, then?”

 

He shrugs. “I was going back to a place that I hadn’t missed, even after two years. After the service, I realized it was—like that. It was weird. didn’t know how to feel towards anything.”

 

“That’s—an unusual reaction.”

 

“It was a little lonely. I didn’t know what to do.”

 

Jong-kook blinks at him. He is not used to understanding people ten years his junior so well—let alone a model, at that.

 

After that they talk about other things. Haltingly, slowly—but many of them.

 

Near the end of the dinner, he tells Kwang-soo that he can lower his speech towards him.

 

“ _Hyung_ ,” says Kwang-soo, hesitantly. Jong-kook watches his long fingers curl in and out around the hem of his sweater sleeve, like they’re breathing. “Do you want to exchange numbers?”

 

()

 

Kwang-soo fits him well in many ways.

 

It’s not just that Jong-kook talks too much and Kwang-soo too little. There is something in Kwang-soo’s sleepy face and sleepy body that begs for a bit of push, a kind of perpetual _maknae_ air. He yields so naturally, to age, to authority. He is endlessly polite.

 

And for his part, Jong-kook has been told he’s pushy since he’s a child; commanding, _over-bearing_ , one of his exes had yelled at him. He nags and bosses by habit; he has to remind himself not to come across as familiar, assuming, rude.

 

But Kwang-soo doesn’t seem to mind that he acts too familiar for someone he met so recently, or think that he’s push, commanding, over-bearing. Rather, he shows up to Jong-kook’s newly-purchased gym and silently contends with him fussing over his form for two entire hours, obediently moving his knees the way Jong-kook says, adjusting his posture and tightening his grip as Jong-kook orders.

 

By the end, suspicious of the younger man’s seemingly endless good nature, Jong-kook accuses, “Are you scared or something? You don’t have to keep so silent.”

 

“ _Aniyo_ ,” he says, speaking as baldly as he always seems to. His face is slack and blank under a sheen of sweat. “ _Hyung_ gives good advice.”

 

“You really don’t say much, do you.”

 

“I don’t know how to exercise well. So I don’t have anything to say.”

 

“See, most people will just say their opinions, even if they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

 

“With someone like me, it’s better to keep my opinions to myself.”

 

“You’re really…” _self-deprecating_ , thinks Jong-kook, but ends up saying, “humble.”

 

“My parents raised me well.”

 

“You’re too serious to be a model.”

 

Kwang-soo shrugs. “I can’t do anything else,” he says, and re-racks all of Jong-kook’s weights without him asking.

 

()

 

Jong-kook doesn’t live luxuriously, he thinks.

 

But Kwang-soo’s apartment is something else entirely.

 

Jong-kook knows he shouldn’t scold—doesn’t _want_ to scold—but within twenty seconds of stepping inside he feels the words rising on his tongue like frost on a window in winter.

 

“Your girlfriend lets you live like this?”

 

He says it half-jokingly. But Kwangsoo replies solemnly.

 

“She doesn’t like it. She only came here once. After that, we only meet at her house.”

 

“And she lives in a mansion, of course.”

 

“It’s a beautiful apartment. It has big windows. I like to look out at Seoul when it’s night time. She’s got two maids that take care of it for her.”

 

Jong-kook glances out Kwang-soo’s window. It looks directly into the filmy eye of the apartment building next door. His neighbor’s blinds hang closed and crooked. In the alley below, someone bumps into a trash bin with a clang.

 

“ _Aish_ ,” he says softly to himself. “I really can’t stand this.”

 

“I’m sorry,” says Kwang-soo.

 

“Let’s go.”

 

()

 

Nearly two hours later they’re back in the apartment—but armed, slung to the teeth with six or seven bags’ worth of cleaning supplies.

 

Jong-kook puts the supplies in Kwang-soo’s cabinets and cupboards, wherever he thinks they fit best. He lays out the battle plan: bathroom, kitchen, sitting room, bedroom. He scolds Kwang-soo for dousing the scrubbing brush with cleaning fluid without gloves on, smacking him in the shoulder with the rubbery yellow things. He points out the spiderwebs he misses and rescrubs the shower floor, clicking his tongue in frustration whenever he sees yet another streak Kwang-soo’s left behind.

 

“Are you trying to hold a staring contest with that tile? Just clean it and move on,” he complains; and fifteen seconds later, “Hey—do you think you’re done with this? There’s so much dirt in this grout that anyone would think that it’s _supposed_ to be black.”

 

“I’m sorry. _Hyung_ does it better.”

 

“You can’t be _better_ at cleaning. Anyone can clean. You’re just not trying.”

 

“But when I take longer _hyung_ will call me a turtle.”

 

“Listen, I’m only scolding you because I don’t know what the hell you’re doing. You stay there for that long and then I look at it and it’s just as dirty as it was before. The dust is gathering faster than you’re wiping it away. And don’t tell me you can’t do it properly. See—right when you were talking with me. Look at how clean that part is. You wiped all that away, and I bet you weren’t even thinking about it.”

 

“Maybe I shouldn’t think about it, then.”

 

“Whatever works for you,” grumbles Jong-kook, and he shoves Kwang-soo’s knobby knee aside so he can scrape out a bit of grout that he missed.

 

They don’t even make it through the bathroom. When Kwang-soo insists that they take a break—“There’s so many fumes in here that I’m feeling dizzy”—Jong-kook stumbles out into a house that’s gone dark and cool and slightly damp with the rising night. Kwang-soo gets the light. They both collapse in the corridor. The apartment’s ancient popcorn walling scratches Jong-kook through the back of his undershirt. The space is so narrow that Kwang-soo has to sit with his knees bent to his chin.

 

“… _Hyung.”_

 

“What.”

 

“I can’t feel my knees.”

 

Jong-kook snorts. “Maybe if you were less of a lightning rod they wouldn’t hurt as much.”

 

“It’s gone beyond hurting,” he insists. “They’re seriously numb.”

 

Jong-kook taps him hard in the knee. Kwang-soo’s leg jumps.

 

“See, your leg still works.”

 

“That’s just a reflex.”

 

“Well, at least you haven’t torn anything really important.”

 

Kwang-soo groans. “My house is so much work.”

 

“It’s a wreck,” Jong-kook agrees.

 

“I’m sorry,” Kwang-soo says, again. “You really don’t have t—”

 

Jong-kook flaps his hand half-heartedly. “Don’t keep saying that, or I might really leave you to do this on your own.”

 

“ _Hyung_ knows I wouldn’t.”

 

“… That’s true, you probably wouldn’t. You should, though.”

 

“Why?”

 

“What do you mean, why? This is where you live. You shouldn’t sleep in a nest of filth like some animal. I mean, it’s like—the same reason why you get dressed up well in the morning. You have to have some pride in yourself.”

 

Kwang-soo shrugs. “No one’s going to see it but me, anyway.”

 

“Well, _you’re_ still going to see it. And it’s more comfortable for yourself if everything’s clean. Right?”

 

“Right.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Kwang-soo coughs into the crook of his arm. Jong-kook wonders if he gets sick often. He’s very thin and wears thin threadbare clothes, and his thin house is cold at night. “You should get a space heater,” he says vacantly, rubbing an ache out of his left shoulder.

 

He is thinking of the first time he saw this man. Not so long ago, also in a narrow dark.

 

And he is thinking, what is he doing, buying this man toilet brushes and criticizing his dusting skills? Shouldn’t there be something—he doesn’t know, _else_ he should be doing with his time? Something better?

 

But he can’t think of anything. And he likes this. It is honest work. Kwang-soo knows so little of the people he knows. He wants nothing from Jong-kook, apart perhaps from a lesson in scrubbing floors.

 

“So,” he says, rising.

 

“Ah. It’s late.”

 

“Yes. I think that’s why it’s, you know, really dark outside.”

 

“I lost track of time.”

 

Jong-kook almost responds, _me too._ Instead, he says brusquely, “Tomorrow?”

 

“Tomorrow?”

 

“What time works for me to come over? I think we’re pretty good on the bathroom. It shouldn’t take more than another half hour. But the kitchen’s going to be pretty bad. Or are you busy tomorrow?”

 

“…No. I’m not.”

 

“Eight?”

 

“ _Hyung_.” Kwang-soo sounds strangled.

 

“Nine.”

 

“Ten? Can you stand waiting around for that long, or are you already going back to sleep at ten? I don’t know what the bedtime of grandpas like you is—”

 

Jong-kook flexes his bicep, making a low growling noise.

 

Kwang-soo subsides, laughing.

 

()

 

Jong-kook calls his mother. He’s only come home once since he left the service. To be honest, visiting makes him sad. Mother sits in a darkened room in a clean, gloomy house, as she always has. She rubs her hands together like a beggar. She says that she’s happy to see him.

 

He goes out walking with her, speaks gently to her. Age is wearing her down, grinding her away little by little.

 

She asks him to tell her about his life.

 

He thinks of yesterday, when he bumped into one of his exes out on the street. “You were in the service?” she had said. “No wonder I haven’t seen you in so long.”

 

And he thinks about how easy it is to move from caring too much to not caring at all; how it should be hard, but isn’t.

 

He doesn’t talk about that. “I made a new friend,” he says. Someone whose house reminds him of the one he grew up in. Someone who sits in the dark and rubs his hands to stay warm.

 

“Do I know him?”

 

“He’s not famous.”

 

“What’s his name?”

 

“Kwang-soo. Lee Kwang-soo.”

 

“That’s a nice name,” she says, absentmindedly. She is rubbing the wrist of her right hand with her left. Her bones give her trouble in the cold.

 

Jong-kook thinks he sees the long shadow of their house reaching down the road and rolling into her eyes.

 

“It is,” he says.

 

()

 

Jong-kook is lying on his back with his head under Kwang-soo’s sink.

 

He pulls himself farther into the dark. Gropes in the air, wordlessly. A second later, he feels a brief dry touch, and an Allen key drops into his hand.

 

Jong-kook is fixing Kwang-soo’s sink, and for once, Kwang-soo is talking.

 

Lately he does this. Not a lot. But some. He talks a little about modeling and the Seoul runways, but he talks mostly about his childhood. He talks about rural Namyangju and his country middle school, talks about the power going out during the monsoon season and slow, sawdust afternoons in his father’s furniture warehouse and how his clothes never fit when he was growing fastest, how his piano toes chewed holes in the caps of his running shoes.

 

“I wasn’t a good student,” he says. “I fought kids a lot. If nobody picked a fight with me I’d pick a fight with somebody.”

 

And he says, “My mom was so worried her hair went grey.”

 

And he tells Jong-kook that he hasn’t been home in three years, and that he wonders if his father still keeps that embarrassing photo of himself open-lipped and drooling on his desk.

 

“That’d be nice,” he says. “I would like that.”

 

And Jong-kook thinks that he’s been wrong about Kwang-soo again. That it’s not that he doesn’t talk well, but that he only says exactly what he means, and then only if he feels it needs to be said.

 

He’s always wrong about Kwang-soo.

 

But he’s learning, slowly.

 

()

 

[i’m throwing a housewarming party next saturday night. since you’ve built half the house, you should come.]

 

[maybe. I have to check my schedule.]

 

[ ㅠㅠ !!!  you’d better come.]

 

Jong-kook smiles at the text. Jong-kook doesn’t go. He’s tired of parties, even if it’s Kwang-soo that’s hosting. He stays late at the gym Saturday night and walks home beneath a sky of shredded cotton clouds and faint stars. 

 

Early the next morning, knocks knead his door. He figures it’s the mailman with the set of hand-grips he’d ordered last week. He answers the door still in his pajamas and dandelion-headed.

 

“ _Hyung,_ you weren’t there.”

 

Jong-kook blinks.

 

“Kwang-soo- _yah_.”

 

“Were you busy? You didn’t text me back.”

 

“I was—at the gym.”

 

“You couldn’t spare an hour from your workout to drop by?”

 

“It was in the opposite direction from your place,” he says slowly, feeling oddly defensive. Kwang-soo’s not really angry—he doesn’t think. After all, what is there to get angry about? “Are you actually mad about this?” he adds.

 

After a second, Kwang-soo deflates. “No,” he says. “I just thought you might come by.”

 

“Because you haven’t seen enough of me in that apartment lately.”

 

He quirks a smile. “You wanna know the real reason why I wanted you to come?”

 

“Can’t be because we’re friends,” says Jong-kook, rolling his eyes.

 

“Of _course_ not. It’s because everyone thought I moved out for two weeks and hired somebody to do all the work. None of them believed I did it myself!”

 

“I mean, you didn’t. And you basically did hire somebody. But I didn’t even get paid.”

 

“But I at least provided moral support. And the bathroom floor—”

 

“I’ll give you the bathroom floor. But if I hadn’t gone over it and told you to redo it, not even that—”

 

“ _Aish, hyung—_ ”

 

()

 

Waiting to go on the set of Happy Together, Jae-suk sidles up to him with a no-good grin on his face.

 

“So,” he says, clubbing Jong-kook in the side with a knobby elbow. “Give me some conversation topics for the show. I’ve heard you’re dating a model.”

 

Jong-kook blinks rapidly at him. For the space of about five seconds, he has absolutely no idea what Jae-suk is referring to. 

 

“What? Who told you that?”

 

“People talk. Really, you should be more careful. Since you haven’t been back in town long and you’re promoting the album, people are looking carefully at you.”

 

Then, it clicks. There’s only one model anyone could say he spends any sort of time with. 

 

“Anyway, I heard she’s a whole head taller than you and skinny as a popsicle stick. Funny, I always thought small, cute girls were more your type. Maybe you’ve changed since X-Man.”

 

“ _Hyung_ , it’s not like that. He’s a guy.”

 

Jae-suk nearly pouts. “Oh.”

 

“Wow. Look at you, deflating like that. You thought you’d gotten a big scoop, huh? Better luck next time.”

 

“I’m just looking out for your best interests, Kim Jong-kook- _ssi_. You’re the oldest bachelor in all of Seoul.”

 

“So? I’m not in any hurry.”

 

“Maybe you should be.”

 

“Worry about your own wife, _hyung_.”

 

()

 

Kwang-soo calls him early, at just past nine on a Saturday. Jong-kook has already been up for hours. He is working on his album, putting together a track. It’s a love song, as all songs are. Nothing complex or too deep. He wants people to hear it and remember easier, happier times.

 

He hums the chorus to himself. Halfway through, his phone rings.

 

“Oh, Kwang-soo- _yah._ I can’t believe you’re awake right now. This is probably the earliest you’ve ever called me. What’s up? Where are you? It sounds loud.”

 

“…Paris.”

 

“Paris? As in Paris, France? What are you doing all the way in Europe? Come to think of it, there should be a pretty big time difference between Seoul and there—is it late where you are?”

 

“It’s around 2.”

 

“Ah, I knew it. There’s no way you’d be up at 9 on a weekend. That music is really loud. Are you at a club or something?”

 

“I’m at a party.”

 

“I see, you’re in Paris and at a party. Sounds like a fun time.” Jong-kook’s pen falters halfway through a verse. The sound of the club music through the phone rattles the melody in his head like a wind shaking leaves. “So, why’re you calling me?”

 

A long silence follows.

 

After a minute or two: “I don’t speak French and my English isn’t very good. So I can’t talk to anyone.”

 

“I see. Well, can’t you talk to whoever you came with? Or are you by yourself—although considering how your apartment looks and the type of things you eat, I can’t imagine you dropped a couple thousand on a plane ticket to Paris just to go to a party where you wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone.”

 

“No, I’m with _noona_.”

 

“Lucky you. Is this a honeymoon vacation or something?”

 

“She has business to do here, and she told me to come.”

 

“ _She told me to come._ What, like you thought a free trip to Europe would just be too much of a burden?”

 

Quiet, again. 

 

“I…”

 

Jong-kook stills. He’d meant it flippantly. As a joke.

 

“You—have somewhere else you need to be?”

 

“I—missed a thing. An audition.”

 

“A—fashion audition?” hazards Jong-kook.

 

“No. Acting,” he mumbles.

 

“Oh. I—uh, didn’t know you were interested in acting.”

 

But he can see it, in retrospect. Kwang-soo is a quiet, careful observer; he collects the habits and gestures of others, sweeping them up from the dust where their owners unconsciously let them fall, mining them from the grit of everyday like a treasure-hunter. He will mimic habits of Jong-kook’s that Jong-kook doesn’t even realize he has until Kwang-soo plays them back to him, putting on Jong-kook’s body and face and voice as comfortably as he does his oversized sweaters and long trench-coats. 

 

And Kwang-soo playacts by habit, he thinks. He becomes whoever he thinks those around him want: the bumbling fool, the jokester, the wholesome young man, the servant. His face is a blank slate unmarked by beauty or ugliness, one that he colors however he wishes.

 

Yes, he thinks. Kwang-soo would make a fine actor.

 

“You’d be good at it,” he says.

 

“It doesn’t matter.”

 

Jong-kook has never heard Kwang-soo sound upset before.

 

“I missed it,” Kwang-soo continues.

 

“The audition? Why didn’t you tell your girlfriend?”

 

“I did. But she—said I had to go with her.”

 

Jong-kook waits. But Kwang-soo says nothing more. That, apparently, is all.

 

“I’m—” he says, haltingly. His words tripping across the line. “I wish that I stayed.”

 

“Do, next time, then.”

 

“I missed my chance.”

 

“There’s auditions seven days of the week in Seoul, Kwang-soo- _yah_. You’re not going to be in Paris forever.”

 

“It’s not just Paris.”

 

“What’s not just Paris?”

 

“There’s always someplace.”

 

“What? What place is someplace?”

 

“Jong-kook- _hyung._ I think I’m drunk.”

 

“Yeah, and? What’s up with you? 

 

“Nothing. I don’t know what I’m saying. Nothing. Thanks for talking with me, _hyung_.”

 

“Wait—hang on—”

 

“Good night.”

 

“Kwang-soo? Kwang-soo- _yah._ ”

 

There is nothing left but dead air, and the faint scent of Kwang-soo’s hurt, like blood sprinkled in an ocean.

 

When Kwang-soo returns a week later he has a new French coat and curled hair. He hides his eyes beneath round sunglasses but Jong-kook thinks he looks bruised, bruised all over.

 

()

 

Kwang-soo is not a very good drinker on the best of days.

 

Kwang-soo drinks and drinks. Today, it seems, is not a good day.

 

By one, he’s glassy-eyed. At two, Jong-kook pulls him outside. He badly needs to take a piss but he’s afraid if he goes to the bathroom Kwang-soo will be under the table when he returns, or worse, gone.

 

Instead they piss together, in a quiet, dark alley. Jong-kook stares at the juncture where the wall meets the floor. Besides him, Kwang-soo leans precariously forwards, forehead against his arm against the wall and one hand curled loose near his hip.

 

Jong-kook calls a taxi. It never arrives. They wait in the cold. Kwang-soo squats in the street, arm over his stomach and the back of his wrist pressed against his mouth.

 

A homeless person stares at them from the shadow thrown by a bus stop’s sunshade. Jong-kook can’t guess the person’s gender. They are just a pair of red-rimmed eyes and a glazed expression bundled in cloth.

 

“Hey.” He tugs at Kwang-soo’s sleeve. “Do you want to—”

 

Then they’re sitting in the relative privacy of a fire escape while Jong-kook dials for another taxi and tries to explain an address that seems to be forever just past the tip of his tongue. He can hear the slur dog his own voice. He hasn’t been this drunk since before the service.

 

Kwang-soo is inarguably worse off. It doesn’t make Jong-kook feel better.

 

Finally he gets the location across. Hangs up. The moon sways and drips across the Seoul skyline, very large and pulsing. The sounds of the city are muted beneath a sea of soju. 

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Kwang-soo is folded in around his own legs, hands locked around his ankles.

 

“My birthday is soon,” he says in a monotone. “I’m going to be twenty-four. I don’t know how long I can keep doing this.”

 

“Doing what?”

 

“Being a model.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I’m too old.”

 

“Twenty-four isn’t too old.”

 

He shrugs.

 

“All the ones I know are getting married. To rich actors, or rich businessmen. Diplomats and CEOs.”

 

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

 

“It’s different for a guy, though. There’s not so many women in Korea who are willing to support a man.”

 

“Well—what about your girlfriend?”

 

“She is. She will. But—”

 

He breaks off. Head drooping.Now he mumbles into the skin of his own knees, bare beneath the rips in his jeans.

 

“She asks a lot. It’s—hard to give so much. Sometimes, I think I can’t do it.”

 

Jong-kook reaches instinctively for Kwang-soo’s broad back. But, at the last moment, he shies away. The image of Kwang-soo standing next to him in the alleyway is stuck on repeat in his head. The way the exposed curve of his hip had looked white and curved as a rare flower, and just behind that, the mist of dark hair, barely visible against the dark.

 

He quashes his hands beneath his thighs. The metal bumps of the platform crease his palms, then his knuckles, as his hands curl into fists.

 

As calmly as he can, he says, “You don’t have to _earn_ anything.”

 

Kwang-soo hiccups. 

 

“But I’m like this. That’s what I deserve. That’s everything I’m worth.”

 

He slurs, “Maybe I’m better off to her dead.”

 

()

 

The taxi doesn’t come until two-thirty.

 

Jong-kook puts Kwang-soo to bed on his couch at three.

 

At three-thirty he has to stop brushing his teeth to pull the towel out of Kwang-soo’s hand. He has vomited in the sink, and is desperately, silently trying to clean it.

 

At four-thirty he wakes up, goes to his bathroom, and pulls Kwang-soo’s hair back as he gags into the toilet.

 

His head lolls forward. Jong-kook pulls him back so his forehead rests on the toilet seat.

 

“I’m sorry,” he slurs. 

 

“Kwang-soo- _yah_ ,” says Jong-kook. “You’re really drunk. Go back to sleep.”

 

Kwang-soo sniffles. His eyes are bright and he rubs his face against the back of his wrist.

 

“S-sorry… _Noona_. I won’t d-.. again… sorry…”

 

Jong-kook can’t help the sigh. It’s deep; hurts his lungs as it escapes. Hurts him.

 

It doesn’t matter, if he sighs, or if he lets his hand rest on the warm, egg-like curve of Kwang-soo’s scalp. Kwang-soo won’t remember a thing tomorrow morning anyway.

 

“Kwang-soo,” he says, cautiously, quietly. _Kwang-soo._ Just Kwang-soo.

 

He hauls him up by his armpits. Stays an extra ten minutes by the sofa to make sure he stays put.

 

()

 

After that, he doesn’t see Kwang-soo for a while. It feels like a long time. Jong-kook doesn’t know much about fashion but he’s gathered from him that this is Seoul’s fashion week. Every model in the city is scurrying from casting to casting, traveling miles and 18-hour days in the hopes of a booking.

 

He doesn’t text much. When he does it’s always late at night. He sends crying-face emoticons, unflattering close-ups of a nasty hang-nail, a bad makeup test, a bruised ankle. _I’m tired, hyung_ , he says. _But I booked a show. It’s a good day._

 

Jong-kook attends one of those without telling him. Kwang-soo goes by quickly, three times in three different guises. Jong-kook thinks he looks vacant and sharp and a little angry. And Jong-kook thinks of the Kwang-soo who drinks until he vomits, who loves a woman he doesn’t know how to keep. They are not, it seems to him, the same man.

 

The hungry days are dangerous days. Jong-kook remembers his own; the hours that felt like battling a storm in the ocean, swimming for a shore you can’t see. They can buff your character to a shine; make you a person like Jae-suk, who is always willing to lend a hand and a favor to those farther down the ladder than him. But they can also mark people forever, like a stick gouging clay, leave you beautiful and distrusting and cruel.

 

There are agencies out there that burn their young stars like matches for the minute of light they provide. Managers who get their trainees alcohol, drugs; anything they want, anything to keep them going and dancing and smiling. Dietitians who slip their clients pills beneath the counter that will make them vomit. _It’s for your own good. It’s for your own good. Listen, I’m older. I know what’s best._

 

If nobody gives you kindness, it is hard to hold onto your own. This, Jong-kook knows.

 

And that it is hard to be young and alone and unknown in Seoul; immeasurably harder than it is to be old, like Jong-kook is, too well-known, like he is; fenced-in by the shadow of his own idol days and the men and women that knew him then.

 

So he tries to take care of Kwang-soo, in his own way. He scolds him about his health. He aggressively forwards him articles about vitamin supplements, healthy recipes. He asks him if he’s picked up that new mattress that’ll be better for his back (“If you don’t get rid of that shitty boxspring in a week, I’m coming to your house and throwing it out the window, and you can sleep on the floor—it’ll be better for you!”). 

 

Still, he tries not to overdo it. Kwang-soo has a girlfriend, after all. And there’s things that should be left to women to take care of—right?

 

Even if—and Jong-kook can barely even bring himself to admit this—

 

—even if he has his doubts about how healthy Kwang-soo’s relationship is in the first place?

 

()

 

Gary taps his pen against his teeth.

 

“Whoah. This isn’t an easy song, _hyung_.”

 

Jong-kook doesn’t know where to look. “It just came out that way.”

 

“ _Hyung_ used to be so light-hearted. I guess you’re not in the _Loveable_ days anymore. It’s true that it’s more interesting if you evolve, but people are going to say these lyrics are concerning. Has someone been mistreating you or something?”

 

“ _Ani, ani_ —it’s nothing like that.”

 

Gary shrugs. “Maybe it’s different for you. For me, what I write can only come from what place I’m in at that time, and the things I’m doing at that time. I don’t write well from memory.”

 

“That’s hard to believe. You’re philosophical.”

 

“Nah,” says Gary. “I just react.”

 

()

 

Outside of the show, he sees him, once.

 

He’s far away and late at night, across the street. Trailing just behind a pack of other tall, thin young men; a loner among dogs. He fumbles with a lighter. It goes off. One-by-one the angles of his face glow red and sharp, mountain peaks lit by lightning. Peculiar features, peculiar fingers—but less, now that Jong-kook has gotten used to them.

 

_I thought he didn’t smoke._

 

The flame goes out.

 

White smoke; the hint of a silhouette. He’s moving quicker now, half-running, like river water. He hasn’t seen Jong-kook.

 

After he turns the corner, Jong-kook crosses the street. The smell of smoke lingers.

 

He stands in a wreath of smoke and streetlight, and his chest feels like a freshly shaken bottle of soda, like effervescence, foam. 

 

And Jong-kook realizes, quietly, that he knows what this feeling is, that he has felt it before and that he knows its name.

 

 _But Kwang-soo is a man,_ he thinks.

 

Kwang-soo is a man.

 

And Kwang-soo has a lover.

 

He walks on.

 

()

 

“You’re acting like a grade-school kid with a crush. Could it be that the tiger’s been caught?”

 

“Stop talking nonsense, Dong-hoon- _ah._ I haven’t been hanging out with anyone new.”

 

Haha consider this for a moment, before rasping, “It doesn’t have to be somebody new.”

 

()

 

He’s at the gym. Outside the moon is high and the sky heavy with fog, a pot-lid of yellow clamped over the city’s cold boil.

 

He hits the punching bag again.

 

_Noona—_

 

His hand are sweating inside the confines of the gloves. He bobs on his feet, shakes his head to get the sweat away. It dots the floor in tiny crystal-like pools.

 

_Noona—_

 

One-two, two-one. His feet aren’t quick enough. Aren’t light enough. He darts forward again. The bag is leaden beneath his hands, the blow dull. It’s like punching the earth.

 

_She asks a lot of me._

 

Again. Harder. He strikes and the blow reverberates all the way up his arm. The bag swings up and away, but back again. Taunting.

 

_Maybe—_

 

Again. Harder. Better.

 

_—I’d be better off to her dead._

 

He hits the bag and the strike ripples and rips through him. Like fire, like knives.

 

He is on the floor. He is breathing hard; no, he can barely breathe.

 

Above him the bag swings and creaks on its chain. Looms.

 

His shoulder screams at him.

 

He has made a mistake.

 

()

 

Kwang-soo sees the bright-red medical tape and right away his hands are on Jong-kook.

 

“This is—”

 

Jong-kook can’t stand it.

 

He brushes him away.

 

“Don’t—take care of me.”

 

It tears at him more. The way Kwang-soo withdraws instantly, obediently—but wide-eyed, hurt. “Just because you’re older, _hyung—_ ”

 

“It’s not about that.”

 

“What is it, then?”

 

He says nothing. There is no answer that he can give, no justification.

 

After a while, Kwang-soo says in a low voice, “Am I that irritating to you?”

 

“No, it’s—not that.”

 

“I don’t know what’s up with _hyung_ lately,” he says, uncharacteristically quickly. “I wish you’d talk to me about it.”

 

“There’s nothing,” says Jong-kook, “to talk about.”

 

()

 

Jong-kook substitutes his workouts for muscle therapy sessions and long waits in doctor’s rooms. The disruption to his regimen irritates him. His body shrilly disobeys him on tasks as simple as moving a chair or getting into a dress shirt. The pain gnaws him like a rabid dog.

 

Forbidden to exercise, he doesn’t drop by his gym very often; he trusts his staff to keep things running. He does come in on a Wednesday morning about two weeks after the accident to pick up bills. Right away, the worker who mans the check-in desk waves Jong-kook over.

 

“Boss, your friend left you something a while ago. I’ve been waiting to pass it on.”

 

There’s a small bottle and a note inside the paper bag.

 

[ _Hyung, a friend recommended these to me for muscle pains. I hope you feel better soon - your girin little bro_ ]

 

()

 

Kwang-soo picks up on the second ring.

 

“ _Girin_.”

 

“Yeah, _hyung_.”

 

“The doctor told me I can’t do weights for a while. But I can still run.”

 

“That’s good news.”

 

“Come run with me tomorrow.”

 

“ _Ye, hyung_.”

 

“Don’t be late.”

 

“I won’t.”

 

He isn’t.

 

Jong-kook runs ahead the whole time, scolding Kwang-soo for being slower than an injured man, so Kwang-soo won’t catch him smiling and ask why.

 

()

 

Then Kwang-soo is calling him:

 

“I’ve made a big mistake.”

 

He keeps repeating it.

 

Twenty minutes after that, Jong-kook is standing in the rain on a bridge over the Han, its oily-dark surface stippled by a thousand droplets a second, like a great, spreading rash. Kwang-soo stands just out of reach of a street lamp. When Jong-kook gets close enough he sees that his knuckles are white where he grips the railing.

 

After they’re both (safely) in his car, Jong-kook asks quietly, “Is this about your girlfriend?”

 

“I broke up with _noona_ ,” Kwang-soo says slowly. He speaks like he’s in shock. Water is still streaming down his forehead, cheeks, jaw. He doesn’t wipe it away.

 

Jong-kook nods.

 

“Where do you want to go?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

He drives them to his house.

 

“You can stay here. If you want.”

 

“ _Ye, hyung_.”

 

()

 

[are you awake? it’s already noon. if you sleep any longer it’ll be nighttime again.]

 

[did you eat yet? you have to eat even if you’re not hungry. some of the leftovers better be gone when i get back.]

 

[have you been out? it’s a nice day outside. it’s a little cold though. wear a sweater when you leave.]

 

[did you drink? i’m back now. there was way more soju in the fridge this morning.]

 

[where are you? it’s late. i’m going to sleep soon.]

 

[hey, say something. i don’t know where you are.]

 

[psa: take a bath when you wake up. you came back at four last night completely smashed. i got you into the shower for a bit but i don’t think you’re very clean still. your clothes are in the dryer.]

 

“Jong-kook- _ah_ ,” scolds Ji Suk-Jin. “I’m trying to have a conversation with you here, but it seems like your phone keeps getting in the way.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

“It’s fine—you’re not so bad; it’s the younger kids these days that are really glued to the screen. Anyway, who keeps texting you? Is it a girl?”

 

“No one’s texting me,” he says, and it’s true even if he wishes it wasn’t; true after the fifth and twenty-fifth time he checks his phone.

 

()

 

He watches a lot of movies these days.

 

American, mostly. Sci-fi or fantasy movies are what Kwang-soo’s most into, but he doesn’t seem picky. Whatever Jong-kook suggests (and it is always Jong-kook who does the suggesting recently), they watch.

 

So they watch _Goldfinger_ and the Bourne seriesand _Night of the Living Dead, Godfather_ and _The Shining_ and _Vertigo_ and all three _Lord of the Rings_ movies in a row.

 

After the movie gets going, they never talk much. Kwang-soo sits on the right side of the couch, Jong-kook in the middle. Sometimes Kwang-soo falls asleep and sometimes Jong-kook. When it’s Jong-kook, he’ll wake up to the TV snowing static and Kwang-soo sitting in the same position, looking at nothing in particular. When it’s Kwang-soo, Jong-kook gets up quietly and throws a jacket or a blanket over him because he knows sleep is hard for Kwang-soo to find and he needs all of it he can get.

 

They’re fifteen minutes into _Memento_ when Kwang-soo’s phone begins ringing. Jong-kook sees him wince slightly when he looks at the screen. He doesn’t pick up, but doesn’t hang up.

 

Ten minutes after that Jong-kook pauses the movie to get some water. When he returns, Kwang-soo is folded over nearly double while his ex’s voice slices through the air.

 

“… _are you starting to feel lonely? I’m not_.

 

“… _how are you getting along? Are you a mess, like you were before you met me?_

 

“ _… you’d be beyond lucky to find someone willing to put up with you like I did. No—you’d have to be blessed._

 

_“But we both know how your luck is, Kwang-soo-ssi.”_

 

Jong-kook hovers, glass of water in hand.

 

He wants to throw it at the wall.

 

He puts it down carefully on the coffee table. 

 

After the voicemail spins to silent, he says, “You know that none of that is true.”

 

Kwang-soo nods, obedient. But Kwang-soo does not look up.

 

()

 

“The deadline is tomorrow.”

 

“I know, but—I can’t make it.”

 

“You can’t make it? We can’t push it back again. The audiences might forgive a group like BIGBANG for a delay like this, but we don’t have the same luxury. And the PR—”

 

“Will go to waste, and it’s expensive, I know. But I only need a little more time. A month.”

 

“A month—!”

 

“Okay, two weeks, then. Or even one. It’s almost done. It’s just the last couple of tracks.”

 

“They haven’t been recorded?”

 

“…I’m working on it.”

 

The truth is, two or three of the tracks have barely been written, and another few only have guides laid down. It’s not that he hasn’t put in the time—he stays late at the studio more nights than not, now, and the old, sunken black couch just outside the recording booth has become his second bed. But the tracks just won’t come, and Jong-kook refuses to slap down a half-dozen mediocre ideas and call it a day.

 

It had been so simple, all the times before. It had seemed simple at the start of this one, too.

 

On the line, he can practically hear his agent tapping her foot.

 

“It’s just that I have more to say,” he says, and her sigh fills his ear like steam.

 

()

 

Kwang-soo slips.

 

Jong-kook comes home. Kwang-soo is sitting on the floor, wedged between the fridge and the wall, red-eyed and so exhausted-looking that Jong-kook feels a pain of worry run through his chest.

 

He doesn’t just look bad. He looks physically ill.

 

Jong-kook is on the floor, too, before he even really comprehends it.

 

“What happened?”

 

“I messed up again,” he mumbles. He sinks the nails of one hand into the back of another until his skin turns white. “I’m sorry, _hyung_.”

 

“It’s okay. Stop—don’t do that.”

 

He pulls Kwang-soo’s hand up. Kwang-soo lets him. 

 

“You saw her again, right? That’s okay,” he says again. “It’s not—easy.”

 

After a moment, he pulls his wrist slightly towards him.

 

Kwang-soo comes unstuck from the shadow of the fridge and tumbles into Jong-kook like a fish on a line. He butts the crown of his head into the crook of Jong-kook’s neck and buries his face in his shoulder.

 

It is difficult to hold Kwang-soo; he’s too tall and too full of angles and bones. But Jong-kook manages. He rubs his back with one hand. With the other, he cups the back of his neck, warm and slightly damp with sweat and heaving with the hiccups that come from trying hard not to cry, and failing.

 

He smells like her perfume.

 

Jong-kook tries not to notice.

 

()

 

He also sees her. He sees the wake of turned heads she leaves in her trail first, follows them to her like a jetstream to an airplane. She has rings on her knuckles fit to punch a boxer out. She walks on heels like needles.

 

She looks beautiful, like he last saw her. Cold, like he last saw her. She looks well like porcelain is well. Gleaming, reflective, cool; white skin laced with blue blue veins. 

 

A man trails behind her, tall and stocky. He carries her bags and walks with a hunch.

 

A mad urge rises up in Jong-kook’s legs like fire. He has never wanted to hit a woman in his life. Such a tiny person. She would shatter under his fist and cut him as she broke, still hard and clear, like glass. She would leave him bleeding.

 

And in the end, it would do nothing for Kwang-soo. It wouldn’t help him at all.

 

He wrenches himself away.

 

()

 

Kwang-soo follows him. To restaurants, to cafes, to tapings where he lingers just outside the set door, guest pass swinging from his neck like a cangue.

 

Late on a Thursday afternoon they are at a restaurant and Jong-kook has a meeting at the recording studio in half an hour and he snaps at Kwang-soo to hurry up and order something when he just, can’t, decide.

 

Kwang-soo licks his lips and ducks his head and apologizes softly, says softly that _hyung_ can order for him, that _hyung_ know what’s best.

 

Jong-kook refuses, as he does every time Kwang-soo tries to cede a decision to him. It is difficult. Jong-kook is a leader and a commander by nature and Kwang-soo is so timid, so cowed and fragile. It would be so easy to tell him what to do. It is, he senses, what Kwang-soo himself wants, what he thinks he needs.

 

These are the moments he wants to reach across the table and shake Kwang-soo by the collar. How dare he try to substitute Jong-kook for her. How dare he even compare them. He is not his master. Not his abuser.

 

Kwang-soo is licking his wounds, but Kwang-soo is not healing. He does not go to her again but Jong-kook occasionally catches him reading their text messages, scrolling over the same patterns of blue like they’re a Rorschach test he’s trying to find new meaning in. He doesn’t delete a single one of her voicemails.

 

It is frustrating, frustrating. It boils beneath Jong-kook’s skin.

 

On Saturday Kwang-soo is low. He sits in front of the television for hours straight and doesn’t change the channel once. He eats a packet of saltine crackers and drinks two glasses of orange juice. Jong-kook seethes.

 

On Sunday he wakes early to the smell of cigarette smoke and the sound of her voice crackling through his apartment—through _their_ apartment—like the sound of tearing paper.

 

On Sunday he pries Kwang-soo’s phone from his skinny, breakable fingers and throws it at the wall, and it comes apart in pieces on the floor.

 

On Sunday Kwang-soo flinches from him. Then he stands and shouts at him to leave him alone. On Sunday, Kwang-soo tells him that it is his phone, that it is not Jong-kook’s, that he is not Jong-kook’s. He leaves the house on Sunday for the first time in two days.

 

On Monday, Kwang-soo does not come back.

 

Jong-kook’s shoulder begins to ache again.

 

()

 

He doesn’t look for Kwang-soo. He doesn’t know where he went or who to talk to to find out, and he’s destroyed his only means of communicating with him. He drops by his apartment once or twice, but the door is always locked and the hallway silent. On his third visit he notices that Kwang-soo’s mailbox is bursting with letters, and gives up. Wherever he is, it is not here.

 

Jae-suk drops by about a week later. He has heard that Jong-kook’s health isn’t good, he says, and has some doctors he’d like to recommend. 

 

As he’s taking off his shoes, he asks, “Where’s your roommate?”

 

“He’s—not here.”

 

Jae-suk doesn’t seem to notice the slight pause.

 

“Oh, I see. He’s gone home?” he asks.

 

()

 

It’s only as Jong-kook steps off the bus in front of Namyangju City Hall that he realizes what he’s done.

 

The half-dozen or so other passengers all scatter with purpose, rolling their luggage away clickety-clack over the flagstones or running into the arms of loved ones.

 

Jong-kook sits on the steps and tries to think.

 

In the end, there is little to think about. He is in a city of some 500,000 individuals spread out over nearly two-hundred square miles, trying to find a man who may not even be there. He is, in other words, a fool.

 

Already his phone is beginning to pile up with unheard voicemails and unanswered e-mails. He doesn’t have the time to disappear.

 

He gets up, turns his phone to silent, and walks.

 

()

 

He manages to remember the name of Kwang-soo’s high school, and then truly and completely runs into a rut.

 

From a nearby library he photocopies a map of the city’s school districts, and circles Kwang-soo’s in red. But that tiny lopsided oval is blocks and blocks of city concrete in real life. To go through just one of the apartment complexes in the area would take a week, and, to be frank, Jong-kook is fairly sure his agent will show up sooner than that and drag him by the ear back to Seoul.

 

So. He has taken himself all the way out to the border of Seoul to realize, finally and fully, that he knows nothing about Kwang-soo. It seems to Jong-kook that this has been a theme in his time with him. Perhaps he should write a song. It could be titled _I’m A Fool._

 

For lack of other ideas, he walks to Kwang-soo’s school. He gets there just as it’s letting out. Some of the jostling, louds boys streaming out the doors are taller than Jong-kook, but all of them look like such children to him.

 

Kwang-soo is young but looks older; it makes it harder to imagine him ever having attended this place.

 

The sun begins to set over the exercise yards. Korean schools everywhere look more or less the same; if he squints he can impose his own memories smoothly over this setting, like sliding tinted glass before a camera lens.

 

When Jong-kook was in still in school, he imagined that nothing was irreversible. Like all his classmates, he thought that nothing would ever truly change.

 

Turbo was a funhouse mirror, distorted looking forward and only clear looking back. Looking back was how he saw that Turbo was also a trapdoor that shut behind him forever. Fame is something you can’t recover from. Even if it abandons you, it haunts.

 

He walks slowly around the edge of the soccer field, bits of rubber springing into his trainers. There is no point in thinking about what would have happened if he had chosen otherwise. In that situation, at that age and time, there was only one possible decision he could have made. And, so far, the choice has played out well. It has allowed him to support himself and his family with dignity, to secure their fortunes and his own. It has brought him into contact with people he respects and learns from, let him exercise and strengthen his talents, and it has, mostly, made him happy.

 

But the fact remains that when he looks at the goalpost at the end of the long green field, he sees the him of fifteen years ago standing there, duffle bag at his feet and a pair of trainers tied by the laces tossed over his shoulder, digging in his pocket, taking the phone call about Turbo’s formation—and then, he sees himself vanish. In the span of twenty seconds, in an action as simple as flipping his phone shut, a wall like a breach in time slammed down between the Jong-kook of before and the Jong-kook of after. Like severing a limb, that was that.

 

It doesn’t quite make him sad. It is just that he can pinpoint so specifically the time and place where his life branched paths. It is too easy and too quick to look back at a him he can never reach.

 

In school, his greatest fear was that he wouldn’t be able to accomplish everything he wanted to.

 

Now, it is that he will someday commit a mistake so great that he will regret it for the rest of his life. That he will commit it as easily and carelessly as he had committed himself to Turbo back then, only to be realized years down the road.

 

He supposes that’s why he’s in Namyangju now. He is living on borrowed time.

 

He does not want Kwang-soo to be a mistake. And equally, fiercely, he does not want to be a mistake of Kwang-soo’s.

 

But he is here, and he is useless. Time swings heavy. He will sit, and wait, and go back to Seoul when his time is up.

 

And that, he supposes, is all.

 

()

 

It is not.

 

On the third day, Kwang-soo comes to find him.

 

“A girl I know who goes here told me that Kim Jong-kook of Turbo has been lurking around the campus like a raccoon.”

 

Jong-kook happens to have sunglasses on, to shield himself from the glare off winter clouds. At that moment, he is very glad of them. Perhaps they’re large enough and dark enough to hide the way he jolts when he hears Kwang-soo, the quick stutter of his heart.

 

He looks the same, he thinks, and then, _of course he looks the same._ It has not been so long, after all.

 

“I’m surprised she knows me,” he says. “I’m not of her generation.”

 

“Some young people have an appreciation for classics.”

 

He snorts. “I’m hardly classic.”

 

“To them anything past a decade ago is classic. Every couple months there’s another debut.”

 

“You’re making me feel old.”

 

Kwang-soo smiles, lopsided. “It’s not a bad thing,” he says, and holds out a hand to pull Jong-kook up. “Happens to the best.”

 

()

 

Kwang-soo’s family house is modest, not large, old; it relaxes most of the way up a hill, at the top of a long grey flight of stairs. And it is quiet, in a way that the big city can’t manage even at three in the night. Wind combs the eaves and birdsong threads the gaps between the telephone wires. When Kwang-soo makes him tea, the sound of the steam from the kettle fills the room like breath.

 

They sit in the tiny yard behind the house. Squeezed in are two plastic lawn chairs and a foot-wide strip of moss and sparse yellow flowers. Above them, the sky is a square scrap of navy-blue handkerchief tied over a tall chimney of air, neatly bordered on all sides by the roofs of other houses.

 

They are quiet. The space seems too small for two humans, let alone their words.

 

But the silence itches for a scratch.

 

Jong-kook clears his throat. “I’m sorry. About your phone.”

 

Kwang-soo toys with his teacup. Circles the rim with a single finger like the hand of a clock.

 

Finally, he says, “I haven’t gotten a new one yet. I’m thinking about leaving the city for a while. This way it would be easier. If even you can’t find me, nobody from Seoul can.”

 

“You’re tired of Seoul?”

 

“I want to take a break. I can breathe here.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“You don’t have to be. _Hyung_ wasn’t the problem. Actually, I never thanked you for everything you did.”

 

“What, like fixing your house?”

 

He shrugs. “Everything. When you picked me up by the bridge. Letting me stay over. Breaking my phone.”

 

“I don’t know why… it was like I was drunk, but I—wasn’t. I acted like an idiot.”

 

“You did what needed to be done. That’s how Jong-kook- _hyung_ is. You’re—effective.”

 

“But you were angry at me.”

 

“I was angry at myself. Not at you. Not even at her. Probably I should have been.”

 

“But you’re not like that.”

 

“No, I’m not like that.”

 

The quiet comes back over them, but it feels easier now. The lull after a storm, rather than the held breath before.

 

“I’m done,” says Kwang-soo. “I’ve closed that part of things. Like _hyung_ has been waiting for me to do.”

 

“I tried to be patient.”

 

“I know.”

 

“But it was so frustrating. Watching you go through that and then treat yourself like that. So—when I’d yell at you about things—”

 

“I know. I get it.”

 

“It’s easy for people to misunderstand me.”

 

“Maybe. Maybe it isn’t that easy. At the very beginning I thought I could hold onto you the way I held onto her. But anyone who knows you can see that you’re different from her kind of person. Yes, you’re the commander. But whether strength comes from kindness or cruelty—that matters more than any rank or title.

 

“I’m sorry, _hyung_. It was unfair for me to treat you the way I did. It was dishonest, because I knew from the start that you weren’t the same.”

 

“…Dishonest or not dishonest—I didn’t care about that. I just didn’t want you to need to use me as a substitute. Because you don’t need somebody like that in your life. You’re better off without.”

 

“I think so too. I’m also trying to move towards a place where I don’t need somebody to protect me.”

 

Jong-kook stares rigidly at the garden wall. “Because owning and protecting are too similar.”

 

“Not at all. They’re as different as day and night. But I’ve spent too long leaning against someone else.”

 

Kwang-soo tips his chair and his neck back. Jong-kook follows his gaze to the stars. Even in such a small patch of sky, they’re brilliant.

 

“Being back in your childhood town; it’s odd, right? You get disoriented. Time is less hard. With _appa_ and _umma,_ I remembered who I was when I was a kid. I haven’t had that kind of bravery in a long time. I want to have it back.”

 

“When I was at your school, I thought of the same thing. But for me, at least, there’s no way I can ever go back.”

 

“There is, there isn’t. In the end, time is an illusion. It’s something we people came up with. You can’t touch the past like you can touch a cup or a table. You can’t touch memories. And so, I think, you can decide for yourself what to do with them. They can’t keep you from anything if you don’t want them to.”

 

It is a brave line of thinking, even if Jong-kook can’t completely agree. He nods nevertheless. “You’ve changed a lot.”

 

“Maybe it’s something in the water.”

 

He looks at Jong-kook, straight in the eye. A startling feeling lights somewhere in Jong-kook’s stomach, something like a rush of air. They have known each other for months, but it has been so rare that Kwang-soo has looked at him like this. The intimacy of eye contact seems to contract the space between them, squeezing it inwards like a hand clutching a shirt. Space rushes like blood in his ears.

 

He touches Jong-kook’s injured shoulder lightly.

 

“I missed you, _hyung_. Even in this short of a time.”

 

“Mm. Me also.”

 

Then his hand is gone, quick as it came. Brief as a moth.

 

“I’ve grown so used to you.”

 

“It’s a little weird if you think about it. It’s not that long ago that we met.”

 

“I guess you’re pretty tired of me.”

 

Jong-kook laughs. “Kwang-soo- _yah_ , you live in my house. If I was tired of you you would’ve heard about it by now.”

 

“If you want me to move out, let me know, anytime.”

 

He shrugs. “When—if you want to come back, you can stay at my place. I went to check on your apartment the other day, and your mailbox was filled with bills. You might get evicted if you’re not careful.”

 

“Is that a plea for me to come back?”

 

“It’s a threat.”

 

“Of course,” says Kwang-soo, mildly. “ _Hyung_ , I won’t come back secretly. So you don’t have to wait for me. Besides, you have other things to do, don’t you? How’s your album going?”

 

()

 

On the bus on the way back, he switches his phone off airplane mode.

 

Not fifteen minutes late, the first call comes in.

 

“ _Hyung_ , where _are_ you?”

 

Haha doesn’t wait for him to respond. “People are going crazy here. Your agent called my label this morning to ask me if I knew where you were. She made it sound like you got kidnapped or something.”

 

“Ah… I, uh, turned my phone off for the past few days…”

 

“Seriously?” He cackles. “Are you crazy?”

 

“I was taking care of some—personal things.”

 

“No way—a girlfriend? _Aigoo_ , Kim Jong-kook- _ssi_ in a scandal. This is truly unprecedented.”

 

“What scandal? I don’t have a girlfriend. Just a friend.”

 

“Uh huh, uh huh. It’s always just a friend until it’s a girlfriend.”

 

“It’s really not—”

 

“It’s okay. I understand these things, _hyung_. I won’t say anything about it.”

 

Jong-kook gives up. Let him think what he wants. If he drops a hint on a program sometime, people will just assume he’s teasing, like he always does.

 

Before Dong-hoon hangs up, he says, “You’d better come back soon. We all mi-ss you.”

 

Jong-kook takes the bus straight to the studio. He whistles as he rides the elevator to the top floor, where his recording room is. Sifts through a half-dozen melodies with his teeth, like sugar skeins.

 

Inside, one of his producers jolts upright from a doze on the couch. He looks at Jong-kook like he’s come back from the dead. The celebrity world really does spin faster than the rest of the earth, thinks Jong-kook—and smiles to himself.

 

“Ah, Jong-kook- _ssi—_ ”

 

He takes off his coat, his scarf, and rolls up the sleeves of his sweater.

 

“I’m sorry I’ve been gone,” he says. “But I’m back now. Let’s finish this.”

 

()

 

A sea of boxes washes up against the door.

 

Adjusting the heavy pot in his arms, Jong-kook twists his head to read the messy, familiar handwriting scrawled across them in black marker. Clothes, shoes, kitchen; one is simply labeled “stuff.”

 

From somewhere behind the wall, he hears a muffled crash

 

He thread his way down the narrow footpath between the cardboard and hits the doorbell with his elbow. After a minute or two, he rings it again.

 

“Kwang-soo- _yah_! Open the door! It’s me.”

 

“Jong-kook _-hyung_? Just bust the door down! It can count as part of your morning workout.”

 

“I’ll do it,” he replies, mildly.

 

“—Hold on, hold on. Wait a second, please. Don’t kick the door open.”

 

“Three.”

 

“Just a minute!”

 

“Two.”

 

“ _Aish—_ ”

 

“One—”

 

The door flies open.

 

“Good morning,” says Jong-kook, and steps smoothly inside.

 

“ _Hyung?_ Is that you? I can’t see you behind that thing—wait, don’t put it on the table, it might be too heavy.”

 

“Over here?”

 

“That’s fine,” says Kwang-soo distractedly. He runs dusty hands through his hair, leaving streaks of grey behind. He’s gotten his hair done differently again—cut longer, with bangs, and permed into a slight wave. He has two small gold bar earrings in. His upper lip carries the hint of a mustache, as it always does, even right after he shaves. 

 

All over again, it hits Jong-kook that he looks good. Clean and natural and healthy and happy, the faint ridges of smile lines emanating from the corners of his eyes like fans of water in a river delta. He has seen Kwang-soo tumble in the valleys, trapped at the foot of cliffs and despairing. It feels triumphant to see him up again.

 

“What _is_ that?” he asks.

 

“Houseplant,” Jong-kook replies. “But I don’t know what the type is. I got it from the store near my apartment. You know, the one with all the flowers.”

 

“I didn’t know they sold _shrubs_.”

 

“It’s not a shrub. It’s just—big. Anyway, why is that on the floor?” He points at a black bookshelf lying on the ground over scattered papers and notepads and paperbacks.

 

“I don’t know. It just fell over right before you got here.”

 

Jong-kook rights the bookshelf easily enough. But it leans away from the wall precariously, and a second later he has to reach out to keep it from falling again. He crouches, mindful of his shoulder, and inspects the joints connecting the bottom shelf to the support.

 

“It’s all messed up. Did you assemble this yourself?”

 

“ _Hyung_ , why would you say something like that?”

 

“You totally did, didn’t you?”

 

“…Yeah, okay, I did. I just—the instructions are confusing! They’re all in English and I’m not good at English.”

 

“That’s why they give you pictures, Kwang-soo _-yah_. It’s okay, I’m here. This is the instructional manual, right? It doesn’t look too difficult. Do you have a screwdriver?”

 

This torrent of directions earns him Kwang-soo’s bare feet flapping into view as he tugs the manual free of Jong-kook’s hands. “ _Hyung_ , please. This is humiliating. Please sit down for a second. Do you want something to drink? Beer? Tea? Or is even that too fattening for you?”

 

Jong-kook subsides, sitting back on his heels. “Tea is fine.” Pushing the shelf over to the side, he begins gathering up the books on the floor.

 

When Kwang-soo returns with tea, settling cross-legged next to him on the floor, Jong-kook has a thin bound booklet sitting on his knee.

 

“This is a script, right?”

 

“Yeah, _hyung_.”

 

“And you have a part?”

 

“It’s nothing big. One of the main character’s coworkers.” Kwang-soo smiles faintly. “He’s in love with a woman who he can’t dream of getting.”

 

“What’s the story about?”

 

“People bickering and breaking up and falling in love again. Family stuff. To be honest, the story isn’t anything special, but it’s honest. I like that.”

 

“Mhm,” says Jong-kook. He is listening, but Kwang-soo has distracted him. It is warm inside the apartment—Kwang-soo has been perhaps over-eager to try out his heater—and his jacket is off, his striped sleeves rolled up. He used to be stick-thin, but now the light glances off corded muscles in his forearm, showing off their roil and turn as he does something so simple as pick the script off Jong-kook’s knee.

 

He leaves his hand there as he talks and leafs through the script. His palm is a pool of warm sunshine against him.

 

It is two days past the New Year. Kwang-soo is going to be an actor, and Jong-kook is still in love.

 

Kwang-soo may fail at acting. Jong-kook may very well fail at love.

 

But nothing is written. Nothing is known, but that they are alive and out of the darkness. This is all that is necessary—for hope and the rest.

 

“Oh—that reminds me.” 

 

“Hm?”

 

“There’s this SBS program that’s casting right now,” Jong-kook says. “A variety show. It’s called Running Man.”

 

()

 

_Fin._

 

 


End file.
